Message Two

Knowing the Triune God
by Experiencing and Enjoying Him

Scripture Reading: 1 John 1:1-3; 2:1, 27; 3:24; 4:9-10, 13-15;
2 John 8; 3 John 11

1. We come to know the Triune God by experiencing and enjoying Him—1 John 1:5; 2:27; 4:16; 5:11-12:
   1. The concern of the apostle John in writing his Epistles was the experience and enjoyment of the Triune God—2 John 8.
   2. The Triune God is not merely the object of our faith; He is dwelling in us as our life and life supply for our experience and enjoyment—1 John 4:13-15.
   3. We need to know the Triune God experientially through the inner enjoyment of the subjective God—2:27; 4:4.
   4. If we would know the Triune God, we must be in the line of life and in the process of the growth in life; the more we grow in life, the more we will be concerned with the Divine Trinity—2:13-18.
2. The Trinity of the Godhead is revealed more fully in the Gospel of John than any other place in the Bible; concerning this, 1 John is both a continuation and a development of the Gospel of John—John 14:6-24, 26; 15:26; 16:13-15; 1 John 3:24; 4:13-14; 5:11-12.
3. The Epistles of John reveal the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—1 John 1:1-2; 2:23-24; 3:24; 4:2, 6, 13-14; 5:6, 11-12; 2 John 9:
   1. To know God as the Father is to know Him as the source, the unique Initiator, the One who plans, originates, and initiates; everything originates with Him, and everything proceeds from Him—1 John 1:2-3; 2:13, 15; 3:1; 4:14; Matt. 15:13; Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6; Eph. 3:14-16:
      1. The Father is the source of the eternal life; from Him and with Him the Son was manifested as the expression of the eternal life for the people of the Father’s choice to partake of and enjoy—1 John 1:2-3; 5:11-12.
      2. The title Father refers to the impartation of life; through Christ’s resurrection the Father imparts His life to His children—3:1; 1 Pet. 1:3.
   2. In 1 John 1:1-2 both the Word of life and life denote the divine person of Christ the Son, who was with the Father in eternity and was manifested in time through incarnation—John 1:1, 14:
      1. Christ the Son is the eternal, preexisting One who is from the beginning—1 John 2:13a, 14a.
      2. The Son of God was manifested, that He might undo and destroy the works, the sinful deeds, of the devil—3:8b.
      3. God sent His Son as a propitiation for our sins—4:10:
         1. Christ is the sacrifice for our propitiation before God—2:2.
         2. The Lord Jesus Christ offered Himself to God as a sacrifice for our sins (Heb. 9:28), not only for our redemption but also for the satisfying of God’s demand, thus appeasing the relationship between us and God.
      4. God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might have life and live through Him—1 John 4:9:
         1. The Son of God saves us not only from our sins by His blood but also from our death by His life—Eph. 1:7; 1 John 3:14-15; John 5:24.
         2. Christ is not only the Lamb of God who takes away our sin but also the Son of God who gives us eternal life—1:29; 3:36; 10:10b.
      5. The Son of God is the means through which God gives us eternal life—1 John 5:11-12:
         1. Because the life is in the Son and the Son is the life, the Son and the life are one, inseparable—John 11:25; 14:6; Col. 3:4.
         2. He who has the Son has the life, and he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life—1 John 5:12.
      6. Our Advocate with the Father is Jesus Christ the Righteous; when we sin, the Lord Jesus, based on the propitiation that He accomplished, takes care of our case by interceding and pleading for us—2:1; Rom. 8:34.
   3. The Spirit of truth in 1 John 4:6 is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of reality—John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13:
      1. The Spirit is the reality; this means that the Spirit is the reality of all that Christ as the Son of God is—1 John 5:6.
      2. By the Spirit whom God gave to us, we know that the Triune God abides in us—3:24.
   4. First John 4:13-14 reveals that we are abiding in God the Father and He in us, that God the Father has given to us of His Spirit, and that the Father has sent the Son as the Savior of the world:
      1. Out of His Spirit (lit.) in verse 13 implies that the Spirit of God, whom God has given to us, is bountiful and without measure; by such a bountiful, immeasurable Spirit we know with full assurance that we and God are one and that we abide in each other—Phil. 1:19; John 3:34.
      2. Our God, the Father, has given us the all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit, who is the bountiful supply of Jesus Christ, the Son—1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17.
4. The experience and enjoyment of the Triune God has a focal point: God becoming man, the God-man, and this God-man accomplishing redemption and in resurrection becoming the life-giving Spirit—1 John 4:9-10, 13-14; 1 Cor. 15:45b.
5. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are one yet are distinct in the Godhead but without separation, for the Father, the Son, and the Spirit coexist in the way of coinherence—John 10:38; 14:10-11, 20; 17:21.
6. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all in us, but from experience we know that we have only One in us; this One who dwells in us is the Triune God—Eph. 4:6; Col. 1:27; John 14:17; 1 John 4:13, 15.
7. The anointing is the moving of the Triune God experienced and enjoyed by us; the teaching of the anointing is actually the Triune God teaching us concerning Himself—2:20, 27.
8. Eternal life is the Triune God whom we experience in the fellowship of the divine life, according to the divine anointing, and by the virtues of the divine birth with the divine seed—1:3, 7; 2:20, 27, 29; 3:9; 4:16.
9. To see God means to enjoy God and experience Him—3 John 11:
   1. We cannot see God without enjoying Him, and we cannot know God without experiencing Him—Job 42:5, footnote 1.
   2. Knowing God and seeing God are a matter of experiencing and enjoying Him; our experience of God is our knowing of Him, and our enjoyment of God is our seeing of Him.
10. When the Triune God becomes our experience and enjoyment, He is not only the One on the throne who is universally vast, but He is also the One in our heart—Rev. 4:2-3; 5:6; 1 John 3:19-21:
    1. We know the Triune God not in the vastness of the universe but in the personal realm of our heart—Heb. 8:10-11.
    2. The concern of the New Testament is that we know the Triune God who has come to dwell in our being—the One who dwells in our spirit and desires to spread into all the inward parts of our heart—Eph. 3:14-17a; 1 John 3:19-21.
    3. The New Testament way for us to know the Triune God is personal, detailed, and experiential—2:20, 27; Heb. 10:16.
    4. How precious is this experiential way of knowing the Triune God!